Our first destination of the day is the "blue eye", a karstic spring. The water comes from great depth and feeds a small river. A few weeks ago, Freya saw a film on Albania and the Blue Eye. She remembered it as an enchanted place in the woods - wishful thinking.

In reality, the cars are already jammed on the driveway and we find a place in the parking lot just by chance. A few intrepid people jump into the cold water. Actually, it's prohibited, but quite some people, including some of our group, take that more as a recommendation than as a rule.

Our guide tells us that it's be better here in May. Not really hard to believe ...

This is an excerpt from our travelogue "Im Land der Skipetaren - Albanien 2017". It's in German, but if you are interested you can find it here

After taking our luggage to the rooms we go for a “walk”. The path climbs up high into the forest and then all the way down into the dry riverbed as the river prefers to flow underground here. Many stones of different sizes are left behind. Walking is rather strenuous, because you have to be careful not to twist your ankle.

Here again, the motto "There is no place in the world Albanians can’t reach by car" is true. With a decent SUV and proper clearance, this "road" wouldn't even be extreme, but here they do it by minibus.

This is an excerpt from our travelogue "Im Land der Skipetaren - Albanien 2017". It's in German, but if you are interested you can find it here

Finally, everyone is ready and we drive on narrow roads towards the Koman reservoir. A construction site with several concrete blocks as barriers serves only as a nice obstacle course for our driver. He smilingly circles around the obstacles to change to another road that leads us towards the reservoir.

As time goes by, the road gets worse and worse. It is no longer being properly maintained, as there is a motorway on the Montenegrin side, on which progress is much faster. The ferry that we want to take today also serves mainly tourist purposes. So we drive on this less frequented road and have a rest in an idyllically situated hotel on the lake, where we enjoy the view and use the toilet.

After a little over two hours of driving we reach a somewhat adventurous tunnel (actually only single-track and difficult to observe due to curves, but also not regulated by traffic lights or the like). Directly behind the tunnel exit is Lake Koman and the ferries are already waiting there.

We're announced, but the ferries are pretty full. Somehow our bus still fits on top of one and so shortly afterwards we drive through a gorge with crystal clear water.

This is an excerpt from our travelogue "Im Land der Skipetaren - Albanien 2017". It's in German, but if you are interested you can find it here

We spent this summer vacation in Albania, a small country in the southeastern part of Europe. It does not see a lot of tourists and the comments when we told others about our destination were something like: "Aren't you afraid?" "Uh, that's dangerous!" "Eh, how did you get that idea?"

In the end it was a great idea. Albania is a beautiful and interesting country. So you better go there before it gets too crowded.

You can find the travelogue in German language here and the album here.